Skylight CEO Tori White turned TikTok's uncertain future into an opportunity, building a creator-first video platform on the AT Protocol that puts creators fully in charge.
What do TikTok, Mark Cuban and Bluesky have in common? Skylight.
When the future of TikTok was thrown into question in January 19, 2025, Skylight CEO Tori White and her co-founder/CTO Reed Harmeyer saw a moment and seized on it.
But they took a new approach, one that puts creators in charge of their content, their audience relationships, and their reach. Giving creators all of the control and fun, and none of the uncertainty, fuels Tori’s mission.
Today, Skylight is a great example of the open social at work, bringing videos from across the AT protocol community into a single experience people can enjoy.
The conversation includes:
• Skylight’s origin story
• Making the case to creators to join the social web
• Benefits of ecosystem collaboration, like live-streaming and feeds
• Social web tipping point
• Monetization models
• What’s next for Skylight
• Financial sustainability, decentralizing resources
Mentioned in this episode:
🔎 You can find Tori at @buildwithtori https://www.buildwithtori.com/
✚ Connect with host Mike McCue at @mike@flipboard.social and @mmccue.bsky.social.
🌊 Catch the wave! Surf the open social web and create your own custom feeds at surf.social, a new product from the people at Flipboard. https://about.surf.social/
This transcript was generated by AI, which may affect its accuracy. As such, we apologize for any errors in the transcript or confusion in the dialogue.
Welcome to Dot Social, the first podcast to explore the open social web. Each episode, host Mike McCue talks to leaders and builders who believe that decentralization makes for a better internet.
Today, Mike's talking to Tory White, the co-founder of Skylight, a short form video app built on the AT protocol, the same protocol that powers Bluesky. When the future of TikTok was thrown into question, Tori and her co founder Reed hermeyer, saw a moment and seized on it, but their approach puts creators in charge. Skylight is a great example of the Open Social Web at work and the huge opportunity ahead for creators to gain control of their livelihoods. We hope you enjoy this conversation.
Mike McCue
Tori White, welcome to Dot Social, it's great to have you here.
Tori White
Thanks for having me.
Mike McCue
I thought a great place to start with this conversation I've really been looking forward to is I want to take you back to January 19, a year ago, the day before the inauguration, the day that TikTok actually did get shut down for a hot minute. What were you doing on that day?
Tori White
What was happening? Certainly not sleeping, that's for sure. I think we had started Skylight just a couple weeks before that, and that ban that day had, really was the spark of it all, where I was angry as a creator, because I thought I was going to lose access to my audience because of this band that I felt that I had spent so much time building up, and then, yeah, that's, that is what sparked Skylight, my building of Skylight so that I could own the platform that I build and the audience that I build.
Mike McCue
So, so you had, you have, I guess, still, an audience on TikTok that, that you're, you're publishing videos too and stuff. Tell, tell us about that. So, like, how did you get started on TikTok, and how has that been going for you?
Tori White
I feel like I've been a creator for like, a decade. Right now. I'm known as Build with Tori. I very much talk about tech and, of course, Skylight. But previous to that, I've been a travel influencer. I've done videography, photography for other people's social media. So I feel like I've just been in the social space for a very long time, whether it was for myself or freelancing for others. Yeah, it's just like my bread and butter at this point. But Build with Tori really was born out of the previous startup that my co founder, Reed and I had done where we made the classic mistake of first time founders, where we built and didn't talk to anyone, and we were like, Wait, we should probably think about customers, or think about, I don't know, building community and really making sure we're talking with people while we build things. And that's what sparked our starting Build with Tori. It's like we should just be talking with founders and be talking with people. And that's where Build with Tori came out of,
Mike McCue
I see. And so had had Skylight happened before January 19?
Tori White
Yes, so we were really weird. So I was doing Build with Tori, and part of Build with Tori was this program that I did called building apps for founders for free. And so I was and I was building a ton of apps, and that was like what we were doing at the time. And because we were building a ton of apps, we got a lot of people asking us to build social apps with them, for them, and so we started exploring the different ways we could build social apps, and that's how we stumbled upon the AT protocol. That's when we started learning about the AT protocol. And we, of course, were learning about the fediverse too. And we were just like, Okay, wait, this is it? Like, if anyone wants us to help, help them build a social app, we should have them build it on Open Social, like, this is the answer. And then at that time too, because Bluesky was blowing up Reed and I were actually exploring making a Reddit clone on the ad protocol. So that was actually the first thing we were going for. We were building what we called Red Sky, and she never came to fruition, because the TikTok ban started happening. And when it really became, I would say, about 20 to 30 days out when we realized that it was actually, it was actually going to happen, that we just thought it was a joke, right? We thought we don't have to worry about this, but no, they're actually going to take this down. And the 10s of 1000s of followers we've built up, this audience we've built up now basically means nothing. And I was angry, and I said, Screw Red Sky. Let's go build Skylight, basically. And that's, that's how it came out.
Mike McCue
So what I you know, it's fine. Particularly interesting is that you, you're a creator, and you were on TikTok, and you were directly impacted by this. This is, this is what you talk about, right? Your reason for being with Skylight to give creators a home where they can own their audience, control their. Own destiny not be under the influence of, you know, some billionaires and their algorithms and their monetization models. So, and I imagine that, you know, there was a whole bunch of other creators that you know that are on TikTok. How did, how did they react on January 19, and did they start, you know, going to Skylight and using it? Yeah.
Tori White
Yeah. I mean, there's a ton of creators on TikTok. Honestly, there are a lot of creators who are already across, like the fetterverse or Bluesky as well. But yeah, there was a lot of folks who ended up adopting Skylight. And I think, as a creator, you know you have to be in multiple platforms. You can't just solely commit to one, because you have the knowledge that, okay, maybe this ban was from the government, but honestly, you can get banned from TikTok at any point, right? You have no ownership over the thing that you're creating. And I think that's the thing that resonated most with people where it wasn't, oh, instead of just like giving up TikTok and coming over here, no, I understand what it means to be a creator. I know you have to be on all of these platforms in order to build your audience, but you should also be on a platform where you know the audience that you build is yours, and so just like add it to the queue is what it ended up being like, because we're already all we're on YouTube, we're on Instagram, we're on TikTok, and I've had people say that where, where They're like, Oh, I'll give up everything else and come to Skylight, and I'm like, no, no. You want to be a creator, you have to be everywhere. And hopefully open social is the only thing in the future. But as of right now, you should be everywhere, and Skylight and Bluesky should be on that list.
Mike McCue
How do you make that case for creators? You know now it's another thing that they have to invest in, spend time doing. How do you how? How does that conversation go?
Tori White
It's so funny because you'd think it would be a big hurdle, but because we're already on so many platforms, it's kind of like, ah, yeah, add it to the pile. You know what I mean. And a lot of us are already using kind of like reposting platforms. I actually, we partnered with Repurpose early on. That's one of these platforms that will easily allow you to repost your things in different areas. And they had, they gave us a discount code for Skylighters to allow them to repost their videos from TikTok to Skylight. And that was, and, I mean, it's still out there. It's Skylight. I don't make any money off of it. It's just you could use code Skylight and repurpose your videos and post them from TikTok to to Bluesky. And Skylight.
Mike McCue
Is that how people do it, like, if you're posting on YouTube and TikTok, for example, do you use Repurpose for that as well?
Tori White
Yeah, I actually use it right now. So my I'll post on one platform, and it'll automatically get reposted across. So that's how I post on TikTok. I like to post personally on Skylight, for obvious reasons. But when I post on TikTok, you'll see it on Instagram and YouTube right away, because I use, repurpose and highly recommend them there. I love the Yeah, the CEO of that company, they're just, they're an incredible team. That's really cool.
Mike McCue
So they adopted AT proto support…
Tori White
Yes, yeah. So you can post, and it's seen as Bluesky. So if you you would choose Bluesky in the drop down menu. But of course, if you're posting Bluesky, then it also shows up on Skylight.
Mike McCue
So, so let's talk about that for a second. So, you know, you built Skylight on AT proto right, which is the protocol that Bluesky uses. So how, how has that been for you? Like you're, you know, people log into Skylight with their Bluesky account, right? If they don't have an account, do they go create an account on Bluesky, and then come back and log in with Skylight. Yeah.
Tori White
And actually, they, a lot of people, go through that flow just right inside of Skylight, because we have the sign up with Bluesky, and it just pops open their their modal. So they sign up, they sign in right in the same spot.
Mike McCue
So, you know, this is one of the things I think that a lot of developers don't totally appreciate yet, right? Which is like, imagine you were going to build a TikTok clone, and you didn't do it on AT proto.
Tori White
Oh my gosh, the infrastructure. It's the first people that, it's the first thing that people ask me. They're like, how are you paying for all of this video storage? And I'm like, well, actually, shout out to Bluesky. Shout out to Bluesky. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It makes it a lot easier to bootstrap something from the beginning. And honestly, it's not just Bluesky anymore, right? Like, shout out to black sky. Shout out to Eurosky. All of these, you know, account providers, is how I like to think about them. Absolutely.
Mike McCue
You know, I when you so as people come to Skylight, not only is like the infrastructure dealt with for like, all the social graph, all the components that you would need to have for full working social network, but the other thing, of course, is that there's already millions of people there, and there's already videos, and there's already lots of content. Tent there. It's not like you have to start from scratch, like TikTok. That's what they had to do. They had to start totally from scratch.
Tori White
I completely that's that's exactly what the AT protocol offers so many developers. And I was truly, I was just at an event last night talking to developers who are building in the social space. And I'm like, You should be building on the AT protocol. There's, like so many benefits, but one of those benefits is this cold start problem where someone comes onto your new social app and it feels so empty and they don't want to stay. Versus on Skylight, when you come onto Skylight, you are in communion with 42 million users across the Open Social Web across the globe, and that is truly the thing that I feel like Bluesky did an incredible job with when they built this infrastructure. Yeah, it's, it's incredible,
Mike McCue
yeah, yeah, it really is. It really is remarkable, because you have how many people on your team,
Tori White
two! me and Reed
Mike McCue
and, yeah, and it is really remarkable. And you know, what's really cool about it too is that you also seem to be collaborating with a lot of other developers in the ecosystem, right? Because I noticed now you have live streaming, yes, oh my gosh. But shout out. You didn't build out yourself, right?
Tori White
No. Eli,
Mike McCue
tell us about that. Yeah. How did you do that?
Tori White
I would say one of the most amazing things about building on the AT protocol is you are not building alone, like you do not have to build it all, and not just the infrastructure side. For people like Bluesky or euro sky or black sky who are taking these account providers or doing the offering accounts, but also some of these like, different, different, what are they called components, almost so live streaming. We did not have to build live streaming Eli, and honestly, we have no business building live streaming. Thank God for people like Eli, who is incredible, has been doing live streaming for a decade and has decided to build that infrastructure on the AT protocol. So thankful for him. And stream place is amazing, and now we get to have live streaming on Skylight.
Mike McCue
It is really remarkable, right? Because people now that they don't have to build the entire stack themselves. You can specialize in different areas, right? Like you can focus specifically on how the kind of video community, you know, experience you want to provide for Skylight, he can build the world's best video streaming platform. Bluesky can build the world's best, you know, social under underlying open social platform. It's really, I think, a big breakthrough in how development and applications, you know, happen, and it's coming at a time also that it's really interesting where now anyone can vibe code this stuff, right? They can vibe code front ends that could do all sorts of different things and bring together these various components in really cool, new, interesting ways that weren't possible before.
Tori White
It's so true. I feel there's so many people who are community builders, but not necessarily traditional developers, and maybe have ideas for what their community needs for their specific app, right? And especially once we get private data in here. I mean, there's just a world of opportunity for building different social experiences on the AT protocol. And I'm really excited to see some of these. Yeah, some of these people who maybe wouldn't consider themselves a traditional developer, utilize the AT protocol in order to bootstrap their community. And, yeah, so much, so much built in there. And I think too, because everything, so much of this is open source, people are just building things like, who's going to build the first tool that makes it really easy to do that, right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think Bluesky just shipped their app, proto dev site and it, or, like, their their latest version. It's looking good.
Mike McCue
Another developer I know you've been working with is grays, right for some of how your feeds work, tell us more about that.
Tori White
We've been iterating a little bit on our algorithm. They helped us with a piece of our algorithm. And honestly, and when we were working with them, and still are working with them. It's been the most engagement on our platform that graze is incredible, but also anyone can build a community feed on graze, and then that community feed can show up on Skylight as well. And so that's been exciting, too, to see some people from TikTok building these community feeds and getting to see them on on the platform. Yet another thing that we get to take advantage of. We did not have to build an entire feed builder. We did not have to build out all this infrastructure. It's just about adopting it into the application.
Mike McCue
Yeah, so so true. Yeah. That's also I'm looking forward to that with Surf, being able to have. All these surf feeds that are that have video in them, right on Skylight, you know, for for users to be able to discover them there too. The concept of having a feed that can actually render in lots of different apps, communities that aren't tied to a specific app.
Tori White
Yeah, it's incredible. That's exactly, that's exactly the thing that I think is so incredible about just the connections across different applications. I feel like the way the ownership that creators will get to have and community builders will get to have where they don't feel stuck inside a specific space is so important, especially because you already see people leaning towards that right like one of the biggest pieces of advice that is given to creators is like, oh, build an email list or build get people's phone numbers right. And that's the only way at this point to have true ownership over your audience is to basically have a sub stack. But even then, sub stack is like putting things in place at this point that are like blocking creators, because that's what they all do. That's what eventually happens, right? This is why I believe so deeply in the AT protocol, and why I think it has such potential to win, is because you get to have this ownership over the thing that you create, the audience, that you build, the content that you put out there, in a way that just has not been true in the past. And, yeah, I'm excited. I'm excited for that future. And I'm like, try. I'm trying to help it come to fruition, right?
Mike McCue
Yeah, yeah, totally, totally, yeah. And how do you think about the ActivityPub protocol and that whole ecosystem, you know, people on threads who are federating, you know, posting videos there. How do you look at that whole dimension from, you know, for the fediverse and ActivityPub,
Tori White
I've it's so funny. I actually, I'm now on threads, and I'm also federated as well, because, again, we just have to be everywhere. But I think how the fediverse is organized, I think it's a really, really cool infrastructure too. I leaned towards the AT protocol for Skylight because of its default openness, and I love that. But I think there's a lot to be said about the fediverse and having these, like, owned experiences as well. I think it's so funny. I see my job as someone to help get the word out and explain it a little bit to kind of the regular folks who aren't thinking like decentralized, right? But maybe would connect to something like open social. And then from there, I see my job as an adopter of these things. So I know, like Anuj from a new social is working deeply on bridging the fediverse and the AT protocol. I know that is exactly what you guys are doing at surf social, like bridging the fediverse and the AT protocol. And so I see our job as adopters of the people who are kind of building those bridges,
Mike McCue
Yeah, I think, yeah, the work that anus and Ryan are doing are so is so important. And really, both, you know, folks who are building on activity, pub and AT proto, are building with the same sort of first principles, right? And I think, the same value system. So the idea that you know, you can bring both of these groups of developers together into a more coherent overall movement, I think, is incredibly exciting, and that is that is starting to happen
Tori White
more and more. No, I'm so excited about it. It really, I'm really passionate about this. Because, I think some people because we chose to build on the AT protocol. Some people have asked me where it's like, oh, did you not like ActivityPub? And I'm like, no, no, no. Like, this is a yes and not an either or, right? I think of that. I don't know if you know that the Spider Man meme where there's like three spider mans and they're all pointing at each other. I'm like, we do not want to become that. We are all Spider Man, you know, and we have some bigger fish to fry. We are working together, and we are going to fry those fish well.
Mike McCue
And on top of that, what's super important is that creators think that, you know, they have a place to go, overall, to where they're what they what they post in the social web can end up in lots of different kinds of experiences that are tailor made for that particular kind of user base. You know, loops, which is a kind of TikTok style experience built on activity, pub by Dan supernault, who also made pixel fed, which is like the Instagram clone on activity. Pub is a whole other experience, right? But, like, one of the things that I think would be amazing if people were able to, you know, if I'm a creator, I guess I can cross post and I guess I could use tools like, you know, these cross posting tools, but it would be even better if we could bring together these audiences. That are using these different apps, they're still part of the open social web, and have that community feel more seamless, more more together.
Tori White
Yeah, I completely agree. It's it's so funny. I think there is this is a big discussion that I feel that is happening in the developer community, in both act on, both activity, pub and the AT protocol, where it's, what does it mean to cross post was, what does it mean for the video to just kind of show up in multiple places? What is it? What does that look like for the user? What does the user think is happening? I think I just love that the community is thinking about this. And of course, we'll, you know, majority rules on that one, no, we'll see, I think multiple, many different experiences are going to get created.
Mike McCue
I think that's one of the things that a lot of people don't fully grok, is that the people that are building in the social web don't view all the other apps as competitors. Like, it's like, not a winner take all situation. It's actually like, you know what? We need to all work together to raise the, you know, the level for everyone else, right? Every person that joins and posts on Skylight is also helping to have, you know, more content on loops, right? And more community on loops and vice versa, everyone that joins Bluesky. Now there's more people that are posting that are helping Skylight vice versa, more people that joined Skylight. Now there's more people on Bluesky. It is. It is something, you know, I think that a lot of people tend to think in terms of these more siloed kind of the traditional models, like Bluesky versus Skylight, versus, you know, black sky or whatever. It's like, no, no. They're actually all just different lenses on the same network.
Tori White
Yeah. And you get to choose as a user, and I actively want you to win as well, right? It's so funny. I do feel that way, where sometimes people will say, like, oh, you know, yeah, like loops where they're like, oh, right, what are you going to do? What am I going to do? Go, do it. Win, you know? Or they're like, Divine is another, latest one too. That one's on noster. But again, I'm like, yes, yes, please Lord Wait. Why do you think I'm doing this? What do you what do you think my motives are? Right now, you know what I mean? It's like, I want open social to win. I want creators to own their shit. That's why I'm here.
Mike McCue
That's why. Yeah, I, you know, I feel exactly the same way. And you know, good things will happen to everyone in the ecosystem, including the creators. When, when that happens? So when you look at the creators, then who, what? What have you been what have you been seeing there? How? What are some of your favorite creators that have that, have you know, started to actually been posting on on Skylight.
Tori White
Oh my gosh. I really love Josh Knows Best. I think his videos are so funny. And he's just like a pop culture guy. Oh no, we're Shira Lazar is like, she's a dream. She's incredible. I love her content. And she just did the Creator Bill of Rights, and she's on Skylight. She's on Bluesky. Oh, my God, names names.
Mike McCue
I feel like, you know, it's so funny. It's like, trying to name a favorite movie, right? Yeah. It's like, let's see.
Tori White
There's a couple different musicians that have joined now too, and I love hearing their music. Yeah, it's, it's incredible. In fact, there's for new users who come on Skylight, one of the first things they see is like a list of tick tockers who are now on Skylight that they can, that they might know, or whatever. Right, cool. And so that's good. So any new users out there, maybe you'll go find your favorite tick tocker. And I keep adding to that list every day,
Mike McCue
so and so. How is this? How? How have they been, have the creators been reacting to this? What's their experience? How are they viewing this effort now that they're posting also in Skylight?
Tori White
Oh my gosh, um, everyone's incredibly excited, because we all have faced this. If you've been a creator for any amount of time, then you have gotten two strikes on your account, or, God forbid, lost your account. It's an, it's a well known among creators that you need to have just kind of like an under the radar account, just in case, especially if you're on a big one, is actually YouTube. YouTube is king of just suddenly banning you. And a lot of creators will make, like, their entire incomes there, yeah?
Mike McCue
Or you don't get banned, but somehow your videos just aren't getting discovered as much as before, yeah?
Tori White
Or you're demonetized on certain videos, like, suddenly, like the last three videos, you'll be demonetized, yeah. And so it's just, it's just, like, a well known rule.
Mike McCue
And so, so are they happy with the are they seeing traction? Are they seeing like, Okay, this was, this is definitely worth it. I'm starting to build an audience here.
Tori White
Some of them are, I would say that that's something that we still have to work on. Like, we still have to work on what it means to get discovered on Skylight, and then what it means to help you get discovered across the protocol as well, not just on Skylight and. And there's a few that have, like, really started to pick up steam, but I think that's still something, maybe even as an ecosystem that we're learning how to do.
Mike McCue
It's true. And they they invest for the long term, right? I mean, here it's like, every single follower that they get is theirs for life, and that's a big deal. And so, you know, obviously it takes time to build up a new followership, no matter what. Right it's going to take time to do that, but, but, you know, you do that knowing that, like, this is the last time I have to, like, do this and have it be, you know, at risk. Now it's like every one of these followers, I can keep that relationship for as long as they want to follow me. And I think that's a really that's such a powerful thing. You know, if that creator wants to decide to, you know, what, I'll post on loops instead or I'll post on a different app instead of Skylight,
Tori White
completely agree, and there's something so satisfying on the protocol, because on Open Social, a follow just means so much more. Because, not only just because you get to keep that follower forever, unless they unfollow you, of course, but also because as that follower moves from application to application, they're exploring the different things that you are creating throughout all of these different app experiences. And that's that, to me, I feel like is going to be in the next couple years here, there's going to be some cool app experiences that get unlocked, that it's like, oh, you're finding new people, or you're seeing the people you follow in a new light, just because this new app experience was created.
Mike McCue
I'm excited. That is a great point Tori, because, you know, I think that if you're a creator and you post to YouTube like, you know the discovery mechanics that are going to be in place for that, and they're going to be pretty much the same for a long time to come, whereas if you post on the social web, you you know that there are multiple apps that are likely to provide discovery for your your your videos, but there's a lot more apps that will happen also in the future, and your same videos will still get discovered by these other apps, right? You know, infinitely into the future, right? So, like, that is a that's another really big thing. It's like you're not just, you don't just have one model for discovery. You know, you have many, and they're constantly growing and constantly, you know, multiplying, so that you're you're way more likely to be discovered as a creator.
Tori White
You don't have to lift a finger. And already, people are discovering it in a new way. That's the way that excites me so much. I'm like, I know,
Mike McCue
right, it is, and it's so crazy to me. How few people actually understand this? They don't realize how big a deal this really is so much potential. Mike, I know, I know, I know. So how close are you? Do you think to like, getting a critical mass of creators who are on TikTok now to kind of to understand this, to grok, this, like, and how, like, how? What do you think is that sort of tipping point? Like, how many creators need to because, you know, they all follow each other. They look at what they're doing and, you know, learn from each other, right? So, yeah, what do you think is kind of the tipping point here?
Tori White
Yeah, I don't
think we're there yet. I think we're still and even as a protocol, I don't know that we're there yet. There's still so much work to be done on Open Social, but I definitely feel like we are pushing the rock up the hill, if that makes sense, like we are, but we're not at the bottom of the hill anymore. We're very much. We're getting closer and closer to the top. I don't know what's going to end up being the thing that tips it over. I have feelings around it just catching fire with specific groups. I think of the way that that's kind of how musically and TikTok caught fire as well, and like a group of teenagers or a specific high school, I think that we just have to keep working our craft and working Skylight and making it better and better, and making it better for users, and making it particularly better for creators.
Mike McCue
And I think we'll get there. Yeah, it's like, you're, you're basically creating this sort of primordial, you know, foundation for something great to happen, right with these, with these creators. And all of a sudden realize, Oh, my God, this is, this is a much better model,
Tori White
I think, of like Bluesky, even where everyone's like, wow, they just blew up. And really, they actually put years of work into the thing that they created. And then when it was their time, right? People were able to adopt it pretty easily, but there was a lot of work that went into it. And people always talk as if it like, whoa. It just happened overnight. And then you look back and you're like, wait, looks like they were really cooking on that for a while.
Mike McCue
Well, what were some, what are some of the protocol level things you think that would enable this to happen at. It even more readily.
Tori White
I have a feeling around private communities because of this ownership model, right? So I think once private data comes and we're able to allow creators to start building private communities. And I mean, I think black sky has released some stuff around their black sky cash, and now creators can start to get paid, and start to get subscriptions. And if there is, like, yeah, if you can have private communities, private data, I think that could be a really big unlock, because really we're then we're on the same footing as a lot of these other applications, and then they can really start monetizing. Because that's the things that I think of when I think of, I mean, when we all think of the creators that we love, it's one of the ways that they get to do what they do is to make sure that they get paid and to make sure that they can access their audience. And that's what the protocol will hopefully provide soon. So some of these infrastructure things as they click into place, and hopefully I can help be a good marketing mechanism for it.
Mike McCue
Yeah, it's interesting. So if you, if you look at the monetization front, what are some of the things there that you know you hear from creators when they when they look at what they're seeing on the social web,
Tori White
on on the things that they're using right now.
Mike McCue
Or, yeah, like, what's their point of view? Like, do they feel like monetization has to be there in order for them to come or is it more like, do they feel like, you know, actually, I'm so excited about building my audience. Eventually, I'll figure out how to monetize it. You know, it's not like I have to leave TikTok to post on Skylight.
Tori White
I would say that the monetization thing doesn't keep them from posting, like, they'll still cross post, but their main platforms are ones where they can monetize. But monetization doesn't necessarily come from the platform itself, and oftentimes it doesn't. I we hear about it that, oh, Fred's will pay you and TikTok will pay you, but it's like, okay, 50 bucks. You know, what are we what are we really talking about here? How many people are actually making a living on these platforms? I will say that TikTok does have monetization through UGC style content where you have the seller, right? I don't know how long that will like truly last. I guess that type of selling so I don't know.
Mike McCue
Well, how are video so for video creators that are not making a lot of revenue via the platform itself, how are they generating revenue to subsidize their their work?
Tori White
Honestly, it's always a mix. I feel like, if you talk to someone who does this for a living, they have six different things in the air. They'll have maybe a Patreon, maybe they offer art, maybe they offer consulting services. Maybe they have a different, a completely different business on the side. So it ends up being a mix. But I know that one of the big ones, actually, that you can can make money on is YouTube. YouTube does pretty good sharing for ads, and so that's something as we maybe get into longer video might be something to look at. I have a big belief in revenue share with creators. That is my biggest dream is that we have some form of revenue coming in. I don't know if that will be ads. It would be so awesome. I know Gray's implemented this where the person who creates the community feed can be the decider of what ads get placed in the feed. And there's nothing more beautiful than the person whose content it is getting to choose the companies that they work with. I think there's something beautiful there. And then everyone's bought in, right? If I'm, if I love this creator and they're getting paid by this company, I watch
Mike McCue
the ad absolutely well, if I have, if I had a photography community, I would absolutely love it if Mia would be an advertiser, and so would the community, right? You know your community best. Yeah, the problem is with these ads that are like surveilling people, abusing their, you know, their trust, their time and energy pop ups crazy, you know, ugly ads. You know, it is, it is really, there's, unfortunately, a very seedy part of the the ad world that is a huge portion of the ad world. But there are that said, not all ads are bad, and some advertisers and some brands in the right place, in the right context, I think, can be absolutely, you know, absolutely fantastic and really helpful for creators to, you know. And, yeah, you know, I like it when, you know, there'll be, like, a sailing video that I'm watching and someone's talking about this really cool water purifier thing that is sponsoring their video. But, like, to me, it's like, great. That's, I, that's what I like, the sort of, you know, some buddy, actually, genuinely a great sailor who is now sort of endorsing this product. And I think that, you know, that really is helpful for the audience. And so, yeah, it does feel like there could be a way to to create more of a. System around that, then at the moment where it's very much a one off kind of thing that you have to do, creator by creator by creator. So yeah, that is interesting, yeah. And I think
Tori White
that's infrastructure that will hopefully get created, probably in community, on the AT protocol. Completely agree, though, that there you just end up watching the ad because you love the creator and that then that makes the ad more powerful, even for the person who you know is the company that's delivering it.
Mike McCue
Okay, so if it's not monetization, what's holding back every creator on TikTok from like, you know, starting to post on Skylight and out into the social web? What is it? An awareness thing. Is it? What is it in your view?
Tori White
Oh, it's a mix. Monetization is part of it? I feel like they have a feeling of monetization on TikTok. TikTok does an incredible job of discovery. So if you post on there, you are going to get a feeling of viewership. You're going to which is something that I've actually been kind of looking at a little bit here, where it automatically shows your video to 500 people. So you have this feeling of discovery on TikTok that doesn't necessarily come on these other platforms. But I will say, I always wonder on that to be honest, because you can put whatever number of views you want on a video, they don't tell you the names of the people who viewed your video, you know what I mean, and for how long? Yeah. And that actually was something that was a little suspicious. When TikTok traded hands to to Oracle here everyone's view count on their videos changed. And part of why that's huge is because if you are monetized on TikTok, which is kind of hard to do, but if you are the you get paid per view. And so people are like, what? My video that had 13 million views, or whatever, now says it has five so it was a big wow. Add it to the list, really.
Mike McCue
Yeah, exactly. So, so creators now on TikTok, are they? They're not worried that the platform is going to get shut down anymore, but how are they feeling about like the new ownership? How is are people worried about that? Or are most people, they don't really care? What's your sense?
Tori White
I would say again, it's just a mix. The people who are worried are coming to places like Skylight and starting to build their community elsewhere, as well as still maintaining their presence on TikTok again, creators just have to So I completely understand that. But, yeah, it's, it's interesting, because I think there's awareness and awareness that things are going to change, but it's so tough because you can't, you don't see it, right? It's like suddenly you're not seeing videos that you maybe would have seen in the past. But how do you clock that if you're not seeing it? It's hard to see what you're not getting served. But there are people who care about it, and there are people who have started posting because of that, and I think that'll just continue to happen. But then, of course, there are the creators who just are straight shooters, where they're like, I'm going to go to where I can have the biggest audience, the most reach, and I'm able to monetize. At the end of the day. They're like, I want to be able to make sure that I can, you know, take care of myself or whatever. And I have respect for that too. You know what? I mean? You have to hustle as a creator. It's not a normal job. So, yeah, I think this is why I am excited about some of the things that will allow creators to more easily do that, maybe on the AT protocol, so they can build a sustainable presence here too.
Mike McCue
So what? Okay, so now, as you look forward with Skylight, where you are at now and where TikTok is at, what's next for you? How are you thinking about the future?
Tori White
Are a lot of the changes coming down? Are going to be changes to the algorithm in congruence with green oh gosh, green earth, that's the name, I'll said green research, but green earth, there are research group that is working on an open source algorithm, so we're hopefully going to be adopting that, really,
Mike McCue
yeah, sort of TikTok style algorithm, but open source, everyone knows how it works
Tori White
exactly, and then adoptable throughout the community as well. So excited to adopt that, excited to adopt more of the live streaming features, excited to get a video editor back in there. Stay tuned on that one. Been cracking away. Really, the biggest thing that we've been focusing on is, how do we support Skylight right now? A lot of people know that we are just in North America. We're not across the world yet, and that's just because we have kind of a lot of users right now, and to prop up more servers for that might take is just going to take some form of sustainability. So that's what we're thinking about right now. Is like, Okay, what is revenue? What does a healthy revenue look like for kind of indie developers? And if we can solve that for ourselves, how can we help solve that? Ad for all of these other people who are building on the AT protocol. It's like, so there's so many. It's like, creators have to be able to support themselves. App developers have to be able to support themselves. Companies probably will need to be able to exist. It would be great if we could have, yeah, some shared ecosystem here where I think only a few of us need to figure solve it, and then so many others will be able to adopt it.
Mike McCue
It is really important to figure out the right model for for monetization across the board and subsidizing all this. This work, there's been a lot of great like community, just helping each other, you know, people getting, you know, donations. And Patreon has been really great as a component for that. But I think, I think that, like, how do we architect a sustainable, you know, monetization model that helps creators, community builders, app developers, there's enough, there's clearly enough money in this ecosystem to go around. If you look at meta and TikTok, these are some of the biggest companies in the world. They have just massive amounts of capital and revenue, which they keep the vast majority of
Tori White
themselves right, not share it with the people who and then they spend forms great,
Mike McCue
exactly, and then they turn around and spend $50 billion on a data center for AI and, like, it's just completely mind boggling how much money there is and so. And I think that, like the part of the decentralization movement here is to decentralize the money, like the really agree it is there should be far more ownership of the value of this ecosystem by the people who are actually creating the value. And that's not to say that, like, look, you know, meta has a platform. They put time and energy into it. Absolutely, they should have a component of that revenue. But all of it, or the vast majority of it, you know, like, come on, right?
Tori White
Yeah, sure, right.
Mike McCue
You have publishers that are struggling and going out of business and having to close their doors and lay people off. I really there's, there's a The problem with this is that the the ecosystem never really coherently built a monetization model that was sort of independent of the apps, independent of the platform, right? That is what we need.
Tori White
I think once we unlock that, so many creators start adopting this, because it just becomes an obvious choice. Such an obvious choice. Oh, I we need to create this. Wait, what are we doing? You know, this is tough.
Mike McCue
Yeah, yeah, it is, you know, one of the things that has just been completely awesome in being part of this whole social web movement is this the developers like you and Rudy and so many other people you know, who are building and working toward making this happen. This is how the web happened, you know, this is, you know, I'm old enough to remember what it was like when there was no web and it was all everything was controlled by AOL. That was it. And now, like, we're seeing a lot of the same kind of, like, grassroots movement to, like, actually transform this and and at some point, there will be a tipping point where it will just, this will be, this will be the model if you're a TikTok user and you're a creator, and you're worried about, you know, what's going to happen with how, whether you're going to get banned or, you know, dialed back. You have an alternative now in Skylight, and you have an alternative in loops. You have an alternative in the broader social web, yeah, and that is, that is such a big, such a big thing. You know, it's one thing to mandate that this should happen. It's you need the tools, you need the experiences, though, for people to actually go and use an alternative tool, either in conjunction with or instead of the the, you know, using, you know, and posting on TikTok. So I completely agree. I think that's it's you've, you've put a huge piece of the puzzle in place, right?
Tori White
Just having a space, just like, just have exactly a space. And I think it's so interesting, because I'll have, we're still early days, right? But that's why a lot of creators have joined, because they see it, they're like, Oh, this is a matter of time. Like, this is the thing that's going to going to happen, and so I better start building my audience now. So I'm not like, left behind, or just this idea of, okay, I have an owned audience. I do think this is the future. If you start building now, you're going to be ahead of the ball game when everyone else kind of realizes, you know,
Mike McCue
well, you know, spoken as a creator and as a builder and as an app developer, and you know, a key member of the social web, I think you know that that goes a long way. I. I think you are, you are a treasure for the whole social web movement. And it's really, it's just, it's a, it's really great. And, you know, I think there's a lot of people building but they don't understand creators. They and they're not a creator themselves, right? And that is something I think is so special about what you've done is this has been to help creators and as done as a creator, right? And I just think that's so special.
Tori White
You're the best, Mike, oh my gosh. Thank you so much. I I'm excited, I'm hopeful. I like so badly. Just want to have this space for creators that is good for them, that allows them to monetize in the way that feels right for them, that allows them to build a community that they get to hold on to, that is theirs. We've lived in this world where we don't get to own anything we create for so long. God, it would just be incredible if we just got to own what we create. And yeah, I'm happy to I'm happy to be part of it and help push this thing forward. And honestly, I'm thankful for people like you who have been at this longer than me and cracking away at it. I feel like I've learned so much from you, and what you've done with Flipboard and what you're doing with Surf social is so freaking cool, combining everything on the web and the fediverse and the AT protocol and bringing it all together. It's like each one of these things just feels like a step forward. I'm Yeah, I'm just really excited and happy to be a part of it at this point.
Mike McCue
Tory, it was really great to have you on the show. Really enjoyed the conversation. It's been great getting to know you and looking forward to seeing you and continuing the collaboration.
Tori White
Well, thank you, Mike for having me. This has been awesome. And yeah, let's keep pushing Open Social forward.
Well, thanks so much for listening.
You can find Tori at Build with Tori on most platforms.
Big thanks to our editors, Rosanna Caban and Anh Le.
If you're interested in this podcast, you might want to check out surf.social/discover, to explore 1000s of community feeds being built on the open social web.
Until next time, we'll see you in the fediverse!